Gluon distribution in proton at soft and hard pp collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gluon distribution in protons during high-energy proton-proton collisions, combining soft and perturbative QCD to better match LHC data, especially at low transverse momenta.

Contribution

It provides a new parametrization of the unintegrated gluon distribution that differs from traditional perturbative QCD models at low transverse momenta.

Findings

The new gluon distribution fits LHC data well.

Soft gluon creation at low $k_t$ is significant.

The parametrization improves understanding of proton structure.

Abstract

We analyze the inclusive spectra of hadrons produced in $pp$ collisions at high energies in the mid-rapidity region within the soft QCD and perturbative QCD assuming the possible creation of the soft gluons at low intrinsic transverse momenta $k_t$. From the best description of the LHC data we found the parametrization of the unintegrated gluon distribution which at low $k_t$ is different from the one obtained within the perturbative QCD.